I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to raise this matter on the Adjournment. The linked work experience programme is one of the most successful jobs and training schemes I have encountered. Unfortunately, in Dún Laoghaire it has been ended, apparently for budgetary reasons.
The linked work experience programme is operated in Dún Laoghaire by the Dún Laoghaire Community Workshop. Linked work experience provides work experience for young people between the ages of 16 and 25 years. Most of the young people concerned have left school early, many before the junior certificate. Most are from disadvantaged homes and many labour under a variety of social, educational and economic disadvantages. They are young people who find it difficult to get a start in life and some could end up in trouble with the law.
Under the linked work experience programme, the young person's needs are assessed by the programme co-ordinator who then tries to match them to an employer, helps the person with his or her CV and interview and follows up by providing back-up support from the training workshop while the person is with the employer. The employer, in turn, provides the young person with mentoring assistance. The young person spends six months in the training workshop and approximately six months on the job.
The scheme is working successfully. Since the beginning of 2002, 90 young people in Dún Laoghaire have gone through this scheme. Of those, 60% were placed in employment or in appropriate training or education after they finished the programme. That is a high success rate. There are 52 local companies or employers involved in the scheme, most of whom are prepared to repeat the experience and to take more than one trainee. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in danger of being left behind or getting into trouble are being channelled into useful employment. The employers are enthusiastic about the scheme, the Community training workshop is happy that it is working successfully and the trainees gain huge fulfilment from it.
Shortly before Christmas, the community training workshop was told that the scheme is being discontinued. This information came from FÁS. I have seen two items of correspondence from FÁS and they are contradictory. The letter from the regional director states that the centre is operating with too high a number for the scheme while the letter from the director general of FÁS seems to imply that the centre does not have enough people on the scheme. When one reads both letters together, however, it is clear that the scheme was discontinued for financial reasons. FÁS simply pulled the plug on a successful scheme for its own financial reasons.
Will the Minister ensure that FÁS reinstates this scheme? It is working well for young people who, in normal circumstances, would be lost to education, employment or getting a start in life. I met one employer who told me he had two of these people working for him. One of them was from a family in which, over three generations, nobody had worked and there was little family support for somebody leaving in the morning to go to a job. This scheme has managed to get these young people into employment, employers and operators are happy with it and the trainees are more than fulfilled with it. It astonishes me that when something is working and is a success, we manage to pull the plug on it. Over the next number of years people will organise seminars, produce reports and wonder about what can be done for the young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who are dropping out of school, finding it difficult to get employment and who are sometimes getting into trouble. This scheme is working successfully in my area. I want it back in the interests of the trainees, their families and the communities in which these young people live. I ask the Minister of State to intervene with FÁS to ensure this working worthwhile scheme is restored.